Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

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HNB
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Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by HNB » Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:41 am

I found this looking through amps on Reverb and hadn't heard of them. I read up on them and listened to some demos and it seems like these are pretty cool and pretty cheap. I know they are solid state amps, but they seem to have a cool sound. I found a 20 Reverb and a 65 Reverb. I am excited to try them out. I will post pics when they arrive. Here are some links to sound demos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7bMFC0Tv1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0oq3kC_fYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KGFC7vhc1Y
Last edited by HNB on Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick

Post by Embenny » Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:36 am

Pretty cool. The OD in the second video sounded much better than I expected. Then again, anytime someone rags on solid state clipping, I ask them what they think their distortion, fuzz, and OD pedals are...

As they say, listen with your ears and not your eyes. Let us know how they sound when they arrive!
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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick

Post by HNB » Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:53 pm

The Sidekick 10 came. It is pretty ok. Not bad for a $20 amp. LOL Plenty loud. Here is a short demo with my Lace Gold strat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7gq5qB63UE

The input jack was cutting in and out so I took the chassis out to check out the jack. I sprayed some contact cleaner in it and it seems fine now. I got some guts pictures for people to check out who understand these things. It looks like they made one board and just adjusted components for the different versions? Lots of empty places in this board... LOL

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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick

Post by HNB » Fri Nov 17, 2017 7:51 pm

The Sidekick Reverb 65 came in also. It is pretty large. It has two channels. To be honest I like the A channel best. The reverb effects both channels. You have the option with the channel switcher of having A and B together or just B. If you use input two, it just does A and B together. Channel B seemed like it would be cool except I don't like the Gain or Distortion on that channel. I also don't think the presence knob does much and the mid knob doesn't really sound good. To be honest, I like just using channel A clean with reverb or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHp1hT0cGic

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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by HNB » Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:49 pm

The Sidekick Reverb 20 came in and is awesome! The overdrive/distortion on it is very nice and the cleans are good. Only thing that sucks is the reverb tank is mounted to the top vs the bottom so it picks up noise and hiss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... AhN0o1vqw0

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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by jdr1014 » Sun Nov 19, 2017 6:51 am

Those look like a lot of fun for cheap !

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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by s_mcsleazy » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:07 am

reminds me of a solid state bassman i seen on ishibashi a few weeks ago. im curious about these now.
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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by Maggieo » Sun Nov 19, 2017 10:23 am

Reminds me of the Peavey Bandits Lou Reed and Robert Quine used!
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Re: Fender Japanese Sidekick Reverb 20 WINNER

Post by ElephantDNA » Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:42 pm

Just picked up a sidekick reverb 65 at Guitar Center for really cheap. They didn't really know what they had. Solid State + fender reverb = basically a reverb tank. I don't think the gain knob sounds great, but I'm just using this for a few ambient songs. My second guitar player is going to use it with some open tunings and an old ibanez ds7 with the reverb turned completely up.

The ds7 usually only sounds good with the gain knob super low, but with this setup the added hiss actually ends up being a good thing as between the reverb and feedback it creates a pretty cool sounding controllable feedback/drone. The guitar I'm using for this application is a silvertone 1303. Don't have any recordings of it yet, but I can upload some once we get some more practices in.

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